My Mission:
To improve our understanding of human nature in a way that helps to further human flourishing.
My Vision:
A world where human flourishing harmonizes with Earth's Life Systems
A thing like a global pandemic brings out both the best and the worst in us. The best, as we increase cooperative ventures, pitching in, volunteering, solving problems on the run, in order to save lives and keep essential services going. The worst, as individuals retreat within themselves, and create an echo chamber for their own fears and prejudices, both falling prey to, and actively participating in the spread of disinformation on the internet. The issue I want to focus on is the anti-vaccine movement. One of the largest components of this movement is made up of young men, age 20 -40, which suggests a group of people who are in good health, feel somewhat invulnerable, and don’t yet feel the full responsibility of raising a family. They claim that they are motivated by freedom - they wish to be free to act however they want, without being told what they can and cannot do. This is also a perennial adolescent theme, a theme that ori...
If Morality requires clear boundaries, fair and equitable rules, and active participation of group members in monitoring and enforcement, it resembles in some ways the conditions that make for successful long-term management of a Common Pool Resource. A C ommon Pool Resource , sometimes called a CPR , is a resource such as a body of water, irrigation channel, fishery, alpine meadow, etc., which is held in common. Common Pool Resources are akin to Public Goods such as public roads, in that, if they are available, they are available to everyone. The thing about a CPR that is different from a public good is that when one takes away from the pool, there is less in the pool. With public goods this is not the case. If I drive on a road, I don’t make the road less available to others. A Moral System can be seen as a kind of Social Capital ; something that’s necessary for human society to get off the ground; something that, once pu...
Where to start? What keeps philosophers up at night worrying? I can assure you it isn’t meta-ethics, which I will discuss after I’ve introduced the real villain in this story. What keeps philosophers up at night is something called “ethical naturalism”. That’s the notion that there can be a science of morality, a way of explaining what morality does that is non-subjective and avoids the notions of moral freedom, responsibility, and purpose. Historically, past forms of ethical naturalism have morphed into Eugenics and Social Darwinism, practices which, in their crudest forms have led to the death camps. So, yes, it has kept me up at night. But don’t worry, because there is a philosophical antidote to this horrible disease! It is called “meta-ethics”; and, although I heartily agree that it does help me to get a good night’s rest, I think it actually makes it harder for all of us to understand how ethics works, and it almost seems as if it is desi...
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